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That seems dubious given the current Labor government is a clear refutation of that thesis (at least in the short term).
The elite human capital, the demonstrably competent people, the dreaded technocrats in the bowels of the deep state. They would have dealt with this crisis a lot better. And those people, including Tony Blair himself, are currently being snubbed by the Starmer administration.
Elite human capital doesn't give a shit about lower class hooligans rioting over who gets to stab whom. They're busy trying to get billions to fund AI so Britain isn't actually irrelevant in a few years.
Tone would have the basic political sense to know that coming down like a hammer is stupid and a waste of ressources. The opposite of what you're saying is happening. People who feel like they're backed in a corner and that the state is their total enemy will fight to the death. These protests, and subsequent imprisonments, have created radicals that will be a thorn in the side of British state for years.
All when you could just have held a vigil, pretended to care while still saying "don't look back in anger" and bought yourself space to actually move the needle politically instead of having to handle chaos and international embarrassment.
Keir is in a worse position now than he was before this. The British state could have used this to grab more power without showing weakness, and more importantly without drawing the ire of the richest man in the world.
By no metric is this a win.
The media could also have contributed to this by factually mentioning that he's a second-generation immigrant (so not a "refugee" or even an immigrant) and his ancestors are from Rwanda (i.e. not Muslims). It'd have also been possible from the beginning to make the whole issue about his mental illness.
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